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Biography

Dinning was born Max E. Dinning[1] near Drury, Oklahoma but grew up on a farm outside of Nashville, Tennessee. From a musical family, three of his sisters formed The Dinning Sisters singing group that had a Top Ten hit in the late 1940s.
Dinning pursued a career in country music and, in 1957, record producer Wesley Rose got him a recording contract.[2] His recording efforts met with limited success until 1960, when he recorded a 45rpm single called “Teen Angel” that was written by his sister Jean and her husband Red Surrey.
The lyrics told of the death of a teenage love and it went to No.1 on the Billboard Charts in the United States.

Although Dinning never duplicated the success of “Teen Angel”, he had three minor hit records in the ensuing years. Mark had a voice similar to Roy Orbison and so, no surprise, one of his best recordings, and believed to be better than Orbison’s orginal, is his version of “Come Back to Me (My Love)” (issued on the other side of the single “Loving Touch”, which is not the Orbison song of the same name). Dinning continued to perform in the music industry until his unexpected death at the age of fifty-two from a heart attack in Jefferson City, Missouri.
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